Would the world be better off minus 40-60% of us?

Question

Say there was an illness that flushed across part of the globe, say there were major floods or earthquakes, say a giant volcano errupted in the middle of a metropolis, maybe a couple nukes go off? But say somehow a large chunk of every major population across the globe was simply cut by a little more than half, 60%. Do you think the planet would benefit from not having so many people clamoring for it's resources and developing on top of its natural landscapes?? Along those lines, perhaps human beings would be better able to put aside their differences and get along?

What do you think would happen? Would there be any long-term benefits after the short-term recovery from the plagues and disasters?

Answer 1

Do you know this is a very interesting subject.
Not so long ago I was discussing the bird flu epidemic, and my brother said "Well its the way of keeping the worlds population down", I firstly sat a gasp at his comment, then I thought about it more deeply and we discussed it more.
My brother went on to suggest that global epidemics and disasters and a way of helping to control the population, why do we have wars? do they really resolve anything or are they an underlying part of the secret solution to stopping us from destroying our planet?? There was a spanish flu at the beginning of the nineteenth century (I think thats when) and it wiped out millions, which probably helped the eco of the world.
Now I am not for people fighting in wars or people dying in pandemic's, but I believe nature has its own way of trying to control the level of the global population and pandemics is definitely part of its control proceedtion , as for the wars who starts them, its not nature so is this the governments of the world, and there way of helping to control population? I mean if it were they would not tell us, because it would not be ethical to let people die just to keep population down ? or is it? In China they can have only one child per family, so why is it in our little island of England, why is there no limit on the amount of children per family, ( I could go on and on here, why can families have six children and then sit on there backsides and draw benefits for the rest of there lazy lives????) but thats a new subject. But I do think the world needs to put more emphasize on trying to keep our global population down, and stop it increasing at such a high rate. Also people are living to older ages now and so with high mortality and lower death rates what are we to do?? Its time to do something!! We are killing our own planet, eventhough our poor planet will burn up and dissappear in about 4 million years, we still want to enjoy our planet for as long as possible and so do our children of the next generation. Our environmental problems I feel will keep on increasing, I don't think enough people are educated enough to know the importance of changing there habits and daily lives, like how many people put their rubbish in the correct blue, green and black bins ? (I do), but how many can not be bothered, I think the bin men should not empty the bins unless they are sorted into the correct rubbish, because plastic takes over 100 years to decompose and so it must be recycled, otherwise we will be trying forever to get rid of it!! anyway I have made several points to let you ponder over, please let me know your feelings as well, and lets hope things change for the best of our planet.

Answer 2

Hm...I have to use my imagination on this one. Well to keep it realistic, even if we are using up the world's resources right now, the Earth doesn't feel any pain because it's a dead piece of space/star rock. Further more, you are making it sound like humans are bad ones with the "clamoring for its resources and developing on top of its natural landscapes" I have nothing against that but being resourceful is the intelligent way to make our hell life on earth closer to what we dream of heaven. Plus, the resources would just lie there uselessly if nobody touches them then wouldn't that be more "wasteful?" Lets not forget that the object itself is neutral and clean from the good or the evil. The purpose and the the use of the the object is what determines if it is good or evil; not the object itself, it is the purpose of use. For example, a gun, it can be use to protect someone or it can be use to murder someone senselessly.
Now on with the question. If 40%-60% of us should disappear right now, then that leaves 1-2 billion people left. Personally, I think that would be a great thing for mother Gaia. There would be less pollution and waste on land, sea and air, the forests would have time to recover and grow again, there would a halt on hunting endangered sea creatures for food. Hm...lets just say all our science knowledge and technological advances survive this catastrophe. If so, then in 50 years after this disaster or so, the overall human population would revert back to normal and our way of life then would be like before the disaster happen, unless we will have learn by then and change our rhythmic behavior patterns.

But a sudden and rapid depopulation of our race would be too much to adapt to. There would be a high possibility of chaos and social order would vaporize over night. Just imagine no policeman and peace keepers to put the evil and insane people where they belong; who will uphold and execute justice? That's just talking on the national level and not global. I mean, WW3 could erupt. If we ever want to depopulate our numbers, then we should do it slowly and steadily because a thing as big as this needs time.

Answer 3

Well the first thing is this would be disasterous. With anything less than a nuclear cleansing, the amount of bodies to be buried or cremated would start to smell pretty bad. But in the terms of natural resource use, of course it would have a benefit on the planet. Now would people be able to get along any better, I would say no. For a time there might be a tremendous amount of humanatarian help, but in the long run people would start to claim property, which would cause the same problems now but on a smaller scale. How do you think the human population evolved in the past. Once people start settling, they try to claim things and fight for them.

Answer 4

Armageddon-like disasters would not help the environment or humanity, unfortunately.

Given that the US consumes 55% of the world's goods with only 6% of the population, and most of the rest is consumed by other First World countries, loss of 60% of the world's population would have little impact on any of the problems we have today.

There would be no abatement in global warming, no reduction in arms proliferation, no change in misuse of basic assets such as water and petroleum, and no reduction in destruction of the rainforests and other natural areas, because these issues are driven by greed and politics of developed nations, not simply by population of humans in the world.

Sorry.

Answer 5

I've pondered this myself on many occasion. Certainly the earth would be better off, but the global economy as we know it would fall apart. I think anarchy would rule for quite a while too.

Also, if you're talking about some huge natural disaster, like a super-volcano or something, life would be very different, as in limited crops, etc.

Answer 6

A very good and very very difficult question. I don't know but, this is my guess:
The loss of a significant portion of the world population, say, more than 60 Million, or one-tenth of one percent of the world would be worse than WWII, including all that died in Russia and China.
The traumatic effect could be so severe and disruptive that commerce and social structures (i.e. medical services) could break down and people may, even, go into shock. Nobody knows.
I find it impossible to imagine that survivors will feel that they are "better off", I would imagine suicides and insanity will increase greatly.

Answer 7

Since only 6% of us, the population of the US, use up 60% of the entire world's resources, the solution would simply be for the US to stop being so greedy.

Answer 8

No. rapid depopulation would lead to rampant military conquest and heavy disregard for enviromental niceties, because the UN would be incapacitated, and R&D spending would sink, and education curriculums would suffer.

We should aim for a 80% reduction per generation to perserve stability. That is, the world has 1.7 billion children now. 80% of that is 1.36... we should not attempt to have fewer children than that in 20 years time. Maybe by 2050 we can safely have as few as 1.1 billion children.

Answer 9

I don't think you can group nukes with natural disasters. The world reacts differently when these happen. One is human beings killing other human beings, and the other is nature. It would also depend on what part of the globe is being "slaughtered". I think that you cannot trully answer this question.

Answer 10

What do you mean by "the world be better off"? The planet is a big rock it doesn't care at all. Plant's and animals don't understand what is going on and so they can't care one way or the other. People certainly care and I suspect the surviving 40% would be is very poor shape after loosing so many. So the only organisms that can care, humans, would be way worse off.